Another one down! See how short the Current Projects list is getting?

In real life they are the same size, I promise.

The Specs:
-Pattern: Priscilla's Dream Socks by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, from Interweave Knits, Fall 2000 (also in the subscriber-only portion of their website)
-Size: Men's medium [76 sts]. This is why I don't join sock exchanges...
-Yarn: KnitPicks Color Your Own, dyed by me
-Skeins: Nearly an entire 100g skein (2g left over—I didn’t run out!)
-Needles: size 1 and 2 bamboo dpns
-Start to finish: Sometime last summer - January 10.
-For: Me!

Notes: I knitted a strand of sewing thread into the heel to increase the durability of the merino and make them last a little longer. I'm not sure how much good it'll do, but I thought I'd give it a shot. The yarn isn't superwash and they don't really fit inside any of my shoes, so I'm not sure how much I'll wear them. They are my favorite colors though, so I'll probably wear them around the house.

How would I rate them?
Practicality - 3
Cuteness - 10
Final score - 6.5

Oh, and after reading Knitting Iris' post on fading kool-aid dyed socks, I think I'm going to steam these just in case I didn't set the dye properly. The first sock (the one that I knitted last summer) already looks like it's faded a little bit.

P.S. DWTS is on tonight! Keep voting for Jonathan and Anna! If you missed last week's show, you can see the video clips here.

Posted by Elli at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Angela asked about the Kool-aid recipe for the octopus* sock yarn, so I thought I'd share. It's pretty simple.

I used one 100g skein of sock yarn and the following Kool-Aid combinations:
-darker blue: 1 packet Berry Blue
-pale blue: 2 packets Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade
-pale green: 1 packet Arctic Green Apple and 1 packet Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade

If you do more than one skein at a time you might have to increase the Kool-Aid a bit (?) I don't think I exhausted any of the dyebaths, but this was months ago and I can't really remember all that well. Experiment at your own peril.

The self-striping yarn tutorial found at ginabeana is great. If you plug in your gauge, the number of colors you want and your desired stripe width and it tells you exactly what to do. I did a 5 row stripe, in case you were wondering. Knitty also has a good article on dying that shows color swatches for some flavors. Can I just say how much I love the smell of Kool-Aid dyed wool? It's like scratch and sniff stickers.

In other news, I cut it a little close, but it looks like I'll have enough yarn to do a second Octo-sock. I have a whole gram to spare.


But where are the other 3 grams? Grrrr. Maybe the label weighed 3 grams?

*why octopus? The colors reminded me of a little tag painting of an octopus that Susie did over at boygirlparty.com. Her shop is closed for the time being (sad) but she does really fab work. I love her owls and octopi.

Julia wanted to know where campus is. I've never attended IU...I leave the school-going to Thunk these days. Maybe if they had a PhD program in knitting it would be a different story.

Posted by Elli at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I want to get at my size 1 dpns so that I can use them for a certain knitting experiment but they’re currently occupied with this sock:

I Kool-Aid dyed this yarn last summer and I love how the colors turned out. However, I abandoned the sock when I realized that I was cutting things pretty close with the yarn. Think I’ll make it? I just have to turn the toe. Oh, the suspense.

Yesterday was such a beautiful day here that I took the afternoon off work. I was able to make some good progress on Thunk’s sweater (almost finished with the back now), finally ordered some yarn for Mum’s Christmas Sweater, and took a stroll around campus to soak up some of the fall colors. Now I'm all recharged and ready to face the weekend.

Posted by Elli at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)